Tibetan Sound Healing

70 Pages·2011·0.57 MB·English

by  Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche

Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright
Preface
Introduction
The First Syllable: A
The Second Syllable: OM
The Third Syllable: HUNG
The Fourth Syllable: RAM
The Fifth Syllable: DZA
Establishing a Daily Practice
Appendix: Clearing Obstacles with the Tsa Lung Exercises
Acknowledgments
About the Author
About Sounds True
Back Cover Material
Preface
I was born in India to a very traditional Tibetan family. My mother and
father both had fled Tibet with only the clothing on their backs. At a young age,
I entered the monastery, where I received intensive training in the, Bön Buddhist
tradition. Bön is Tibet’s most ancient spiritual tradition. It includes teachings and
practices applicable to all parts of life, including our relationship with the
elemental qualities of nature; our ethical and moral behavior; the development of
love, compassion, joy, and equanimity; and Bön’s highest teachings of dzogchen,
or “great completion.” According to the traditional Bön account of its origins,
many thousands of years before the birth of the Buddha Shakyamuni in India,
the Buddha Tonpa Shenrab Miwoche came to this world and expounded his
teachings. Followers of Bön receive oral teachings and transmissions from
teachers in a lineage unbroken from ancient times until the present day.
My monastic training included an eleven-year course of traditional studies
at the Bön Dialectic School, culminating in a geshe degree, which could be
considered the equivalent of a doctorate in the philosophy of religion in the
West. While at the monastery, I lived closely with my teachers. One of my root
teachers, Lopon Sangye Tenzin, recognized me as a tulku, or reincarnation, of
the famous meditation master Khyungtul Rinpoche.
The Bön Buddhist tradition is a tradition rich with methods to guide all
beings on the path to liberation. I am able to make these precious teachings
available in the West because of the tireless dedication of my teachers to
preserve these teachings and because of their profound wisdom and loving
kindness.
Through teaching Western students, I have learned much. Tibetans are not
used to asking so many questions! Many Western students helped me by asking
questions about the dharma, the teachings about the path to liberation from
suffering. In the challenge of bringing the Tibetan Bön Buddhist dharma to the
West, these were very valuable questions. I had experienced one way of teaching
in the monastery; I have experienced another way of teaching in the West. I
come to the place of offering this practice of the Five Warrior Syllables as a
result of my work, my practice, my interaction with students, and my interaction
with Western culture. My teaching style is a result of many years of familiarity
and reflection.
Dharma is not nearly as successful in the West as it can be, and this makes
me sad. I see people doing all kinds of crazy things with Buddhist ideas and
philosophy. For some, Buddhism is so intellectually stimulating that they discuss
it for years. In the end, what is the result? What has changed in the student’s
conduct? Students repeat the same dharma discussions over and over with this
teacher and then with a new teacher, with different students, and in different
retreat situations. Afterward, many go back to exactly the same place where they
began ten, fifteen, twenty years ago. The dharma has not deeply touched them or
taken root in the proper way.
There is often a separation between the real issues that we live with in
everyday life and the spiritual life to which we aspire. These two areas often
don’t communicate with each other at all. For example, in our spiritual practice
we pray for the development of compassion by repeating, “May all sentient
beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering.” But how real is
compassion in your life? How deeply has that aspiration entered your life? If you
investigate how you are actually living, you may be disappointed because you do
not really feel compassion when you consider your annoying neighbor or your
recent reaction to your aging parents. Even if you chant again and again, “May
all sentient beings be free from suffering and the cause of suffering,” someone
who knows you very well could ask you, “When you say ‘all sentient beings,’
are you really including these five people, and especially that last one?”
This practice of the Five Warrior Syllables is a practice that can change
your life. But you have to bring your spiritual practice into the very conditions
and struggles of the life you are actually experiencing. If you cannot make
changes in the simple struggles of your day-to-day life, then there is no way to
make changes in the big places where you aspire to be of benefit to all beings. If
you are not able to love someone with whom you live or to be kind to your
parents, friends, and colleagues, then you cannot love strangers, and you
certainly cannot love those who make you feel bad. Where do you begin? You
begin with your own face. When you want to see changes in your life, and you
don’t see those changes, listen to the clear instructions of this meditation practice
and bring the practice directly into your life.
It is my sincere desire that this simple and elegant practice of the Five
Warrior Syllables, which is based on the highest teachings of the Tibetan Bön
Buddhist tradition of which I am a lineage holder, will benefit many beings in
the West. Please receive it with my blessing, and bring it into your life. Let it
support you to become kind and strong and clear and awake.
Tenzin Wangyal Rinpoche
Charlottesville, Virginia
March 2006
Introduction
The heart of the spiritual path is the longing to know and to be your true
and authentic self. This has been the motivation of thousands who have gone
before you and will come after you. According to the highest teachings in the
Tibetan Bön Buddhist tradition, the true self that we long for is primordially
pure. Each one of us, just as we are, is primordially pure. Of course when you
hear that, you may think that it sounds like a great principle or philosophy, but
you may not particularly feel that way right now. For your whole life, you have
been flooded with images and messages that you are not pure, and it is easy for
you to believe that you are not. Nevertheless, according to the teachings, your
true nature is pure. That is who you really are.
Why is it so difficult to access or experience this purity? Why is there so
much confusion and suffering? The truth of the matter is that our true self is too
close to the mind that experiences suffering. It is so close we rarely recognize it,
and so it is obscured. The good news is that the moment we begin to suffer or
recognize that we are confused, we have an opportunity to awaken. Suffering
shakes us and brings us the opportunity to awaken to a deeper truth. Most of the
time when we suffer, we feel we need to change something in order to improve
our lives. We change our jobs, relationships, diet, personal habits, and on and on.
There are huge industries driven by this restless need that we experience to
constantly improve our conditions and ourselves. While these actions may
provide temporary relief or improve the quality of life, the methods never seem
to go deep enough to cut the root of our dissatisfaction. This simply means that
through all the methods of self-improvement we engage, as beneficial as they
may seem, we have not fully met and become who we truly are.
Our dissatisfaction is useful when it makes us ask new questions, but it is
most helpful when we ask the right question. According to the highest teaching
in my tradition, the question we should be asking is, “Who is suffering? Who is
experiencing this problem?” This a very important question to ask, but if it is not
asked in the right way, it is possible to end up with the wrong conclusion. When
we ask, “Who is suffering?” we have to look directly and clearly into the inner
space of our being. Many do not look long enough or thoroughly enough to
connect with their innermost essence.
Encountering dissatisfaction is a necessary motivation on the spiritual path.
When brought directly into your meditation practice, it becomes a powerful
entrance to connecting with the pure space of being. Working with the Five
Warrior Syllables as a meditation practice, you do connect with your
primordially pure self. Having connected, you can develop trust and confidence
in that authentic self, and your life can reflect and express the spontaneous and
virtuous actions that arise from this authentic and true self.
OVERVIEW OF THE FIVE WARRIOR SYLLABLES
Our fundamental awake nature is not produced or created, but is already
there. In the way the vast expanse of the sky is present but may be obscured by
clouds, we too are obscured by habitual patterns that we mistake for ourselves.
The practice of the Five Warrior Syllables is a skillful means that can support us
to release our negative and limiting behavioral patterns of body, speech, and
mind, and make room for a more spontaneous, creative, and authentic
expression. In this practice, we recognize, connect with, and trust what is already
there. In a relative sense, we begin to practice loving kindness, compassion, joy,
and equanimity, qualities that bring great benefit experienced and expressed in
our relationship with self and others. Ultimately, the practice brings us to the full
recognition of our true self. In the teachings, the metaphor for this experience is
a child recognizing her mother in a crowd—an instant, deep recognition of
connection, an experience of home. This is referred to as the natural mind, and
that mind is pure. In the natural mind, all virtues are spontaneously perfected.
There are many different ways we can practice meditation and connect with
our true self. In my book on the five elements, Healing with Form, Energy, and
Light, I talk about using the power of the natural world to support a deeper and
more authentic connection with our essence. When we stand on top of a
mountain, we get an unquestionable experience of vast and open space. It is
important to realize that that feeling, that experience, is in us and not only in the
impressive vista. With a mountain, we can connect with and develop stability.
Many of us go to the ocean for rest and enjoyment, but the natural power of the
ocean can support us to develop openness. We can go into nature to connect with
certain qualities and internalize those qualities, in the sense of taking what we
feel in the physical connection and bringing that deeper inside where our
experience becomes one of energy and mind.
Many times we look at a flower and think, “So beautiful! So beautiful!” At
that moment, it is good to realize that beautiful quality internally. Feel it with the
support of looking at the flower. Don’t merely look at the flower or any external
object and conclude that the beauty rests there in that object. Then you are only
seeing your belief that the flower is beautiful but has nothing to do with you.
Bring that quality and feeling to a deeper recognition: “I am experiencing this.
The flower is supporting me to experience this.” Rather than, “It’s just a flower.
I’m not like that.” We have so many opportunities to try this in life.
In the practice of the Five Warrior Syllables, we are not coming from the
outside in. The approach here is from a discovery of internal space and moving
from there to spontaneous manifestation. With sound, we clear our habitual
tendencies and obstacles and connect with the clear and open space of our being.
This open space is the source of all virtues and is fundamental to each of us. It is
simply who we are—awake, clear, buddha.
There are five warrior syllables— A, OM, HUNG, RAM, and DZA—and
each syllable represents a quality of realization. They are referred to as “seed
syllables” because they possess the essence of enlightenment. These five
syllables represent the body, speech, mind, virtuous qualities, and actions of
enlightenment, respectively. Together, they represent the true and fully expressed
nature of our authentic self.
In the practice, we sing each warrior syllable in sequence. With each
syllable, we focus on a corresponding energy center, or chakra, in the body and
connect with the quality that corresponds with that syllable. The sequence moves
from the pure open space of being to the place of the manifestation of virtue in
action. As you begin each practice session, you come as your ordinary self,
bringing those conditions and patterns of your life that you are seeking to open,
clear, and transform—both those of which you are aware and those that are
hidden from you. The first points of focus are the forehead and crown chakras. A
chakra is simply an energetic location in the body, similar to a wheel or center
where many energy pathways converge. These centers are not at the surface of
the body but are within the body along the central channel, a channel of light that
extends from below the navel straight up through the center of the body and
opens at the crown. Different systems of practice use different chakras as focal
points. In the Five Warrior Syllables practice, A is associated with the forehead
and crown chakras and the changeless body; OM with the throat and the quality
of unceasing speech; HUNG with the heart and the quality of undeluded mind;
RAM with the navel chakra and ripened, virtuous qualities; and DZA with the
secret chakra and spontaneous action.
Pronunciation Guide
A ~ pronounced “ah” like the “a” sound in the word calm
OM ~ rhymes with the word home
HUNG ~ the “u” sounds like the “oo” in the word hook
RAM ~ the “a” sounds like the “a” in the word calm
DZA ~ sharp and percussive; the front upper and lower teeth come
together, with the tongue pressing against them as you sharply release the “dz”
sound into the “ah” sound like the “a” in the word calm
By simply drawing our attention to a chakra location, subtle prana is
activated. Prana is the Sanskrit word for “vital breath”; the Tibetan word is lung,
while the Chinese use qi or chi, and the Japanese, ki. I refer to connection with
this level of experience as the energetic dimension. Through the vibration of the
sound of the particular syllable, we activate the possibility of dissipating
physical, emotional or energetic, and mental disturbances that are held in the
prana, or vital breath. As we bring mind, breath, and sound vibration together,
we can begin to feel shifts and changes at the levels of our body, emotions, and
mind. Through releasing blocks and then recognizing and resting in the space
within us that clears and opens, we enter a higher state of consciousness.
Each seed syllable has a corresponding quality of light, a particular color. A
is white, OM is red, HUNG is blue, RAM is red, and DZA is green. When we
sing the syllable, we also visualize or imagine the light radiating from the
chakra. This supports us to dissipate the subtlest obscurations of mind and to
experience the natural radiance of the awakened mind.
Through the powerful combination of focus on a particular location, the
vibration of the sound, and the awareness of light, we develop an increasingly
clear and open presence, radiant with positive qualities. The qualities
themselves, among them love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, become
supports or entrances to an even deeper connection with self, a deeper wisdom,
the very space from which all of existence arises.
In the practice of the Five Warrior Syllables, we have a departing place, the
place of conditions and dissatisfactions; doorways through which to enter, which
are the chakras; and a final destination, our essential being.
OUTER, INNER, AND SECRET LEVELS OF EXPERIENCE
These syllables are referred to as warrior syllables. The term warrior refers
to the ability to conquer the forces of negativity. Sacred sound has the power to
eliminate obstacles, emotional blocks, and mental obscurations that prevent us
from recognizing the nature of mind and from being our authentic self in any
given moment. We can look at obstacles on three levels: external, internal, and
secret. External obstacles are sickness and other adverse circumstances.
Whatever the external causes and conditions, the Five Warrior Syllables practice
is a means to work with and overcome the suffering we experience in relation to
those conditions. Through the practice, we also eliminate internal obstacles,